Male, 28 years of age. His physical dimensions shift like the tides, varying week to week, sometimes day to day. He finds himself both in awe of and bewildered by the factors that govern this flux. Some are tangible, logical: the hours of sleep he managed the night before, or the weights he lifted in silent negotiation with his aggression. Others, however, lie beyond the reach of reason, incomprehensible to his own imagination, intangible and abstract, like the angle of the sun in the winter sky .

Height, approximately 183 centimeters, though even this feels conditional. Centimeters are gained or lost based on posture, confidence, or defeat. Did he walk tall that day, shoulders back, or did he spend the night before hunched staring at a computer, a machine that became a true phantom limp, it aches for my ache.

Weights around 83 kilograms with a body fat percentage around the 13 percent . The rest is scattered across the stats on a sheet of paper from his last doctor’s visit.

These dimensions yield a body surface area of approximately 2.08 square meters, while his internal body volume registers at 86,000 cubic centimeters—or 86 liters, a strange and fragile metric for the self.

And if all is seen by the eyes. He wonders about his: two spheres of roughly 2.4 centimeters in diameter, their surface area calculated at 4πr², their volume barely over 1.2 cubic centimeters. Yet these orbs, less than 0.087% of his body surface area, yield all the power over him. Through them, the world filters in, vivid or grey.

And if all is seen by the eyes and touched by the finger. How much has brushed against his fingertips, those slender cylinders of nerve and skin, with their humble surface area of 7.07 square centimeters, their volume a negligible 2.65 cubic centimeters? He wonders: how much will they touch before they no longer can?

While the image of his body surface area has been shaped by the eyes of others and nevertheless his own, his body interior volume is governed by two measurable substances: an ADHD medication of 70 mg taken daily upon waking, taken daily the second his eyes open from their shut and his fingertips seek the feather weight of a bill ridiculously colored both red and blue, as if Alice chose to go down the rabbit hole, as if he had always planned to go down the rabbit hole alone, her; as if the rabbit hole is not another nightmare fantasy offering an allusion of choice; as if Neo and Mr. Smith weren’t one alike.

The second substance lacks all the dazzling bright color. It simply helps him fall asleep, with a price of rushing deep anxiety articulated by past memories just right before the eyes close, offering a glimpse of all that could go wrong, all his illusion of control shatters; he listens, it shatters loud, memories come rushing fast. His way out is currently season 10 of Always Sunny in Philadelphia. It offers no cure, only distraction. Now his eyes close shut, starting a new repetitive cycle.

Don’t mistake this for something it’s not. This is about images.

In the previously mentioned 25 meters his body occupies, a recess is carved into one of the walls: a small alcove, 1.2 meters long by 0.8 meters wide, stretching upward to a height of 3 meters, providing a volume of 2.88 cubic meters. A rectangle. Within this void, tools of image-making are meticulously arrayed, categorically organized, the instruments of self-presentation calibrated for the gaze of others—curious, unforgiving, and unyielding. His own gaze joins theirs, equally unforgiving, equally unyielding.

Images, are obsessions: the texture of stone beneath his fingertips as they roll along a fortress wall, the resistance of poured concrete to its mold, the faint and almost imperceptible scent of limestone. These obsessions, tangible as they are, sometimes buy him a moment of forgiveness—from himself or others—when the monstrous forms that haunt the limestone landscape briefly escape to the realm of the gaze of the other’s eye.

The above-mentioned rectangle recesses hold many entities; some are loved, some were regretted shortly after their ownership. But few are truly loved—not loved as tools of image-making, not loved for their external form, not loved for their craftsmanship, and definitely not loved based on their price tag. Few are truly loved.

A fabric mill under the name of Drago, located in a region in Italy, which employs approximately 150 workers, not so long ago imported wool fibers that underwent meticulous sifting and selection—a process akin to Darwinian natural selection resulting in fabric of ultra-fine fibers of only 14.5 microns, titled S180. S as in short for super or superior, not entirely sure, 14.5 microns—that’s softer than human hair, that’s softer than his mother’s hair.

Nothing will ever be soft as his mother’s hair. One of the memories that the bill, lacking any dazzling bright colors, brings is the memory of him cutting her hair a day or two before chemotherapy starts. She asked him to cut her hair; he said yes. He held all the tears his eyes wanted to spill. Few jokes were made on how much money he saved shaving for himself since he was 16. Few jokes were made on the shape of his head right after his Saturday night regular but inconsistent buzz cut. Few sarcastic jokes hid what needed to be forgotten during that brief, upcoming long 7 minutes in hell. He grasped his shaving machine and scissors and he started. He tried to be as soft as he could possibly be. He failed. A few times the machine caused some pain—no, it was his fingertips holding the machine that caused this pain. All the years of him shaving for himself had no weight when he was asked by her to shave her hair. He saved her hair. Long, dark, and beautiful.

A dark brown belted overcoat, made of S180 fabric, cost 650 euros (he saved every penny so he could afford it), made in China. Few things are truly loved: a dark brown belted overcoat. Size 50. Soft, wide, flowing shoulders, unsupported, unlined, dark brown equal to the exact shade of his father’s skin, dark brown—not like his own skin—with a belt he ties tightly, to over-articulate a masculine form of wide once-upon-a-time soft shoulders. The dark brown belted overcoat, like the yarns that made the fabric, intertwined not to be separated, unsalvageable qualities overlapping a reminder of a kind monster that roams free in each memory. Visual similarities intertwine, an unmistakable similarity: a form, or rather an image, he calls upon in time to mask fear or display dominance—two feelings he struggled with, two feelings undesired to him, two feelings that shaped his limited imagination of what all landscapes could be, or how to inhabit one, a cold one, where the dark brown belted overcoat with a surface area of approximately two meters never keeps him warm or comforts him, yet covers him in images of grandiose fantasies and narcissism. He is wishing to inhabit a soft landscape, one with earth surface covered in the fragrance of thyme, basil, and the flowers she always loved, a landscape where the temperature would drop at night, a soft cold breeze pulls you toward him enough to cover a shoulder in a long red.

Crimson red, Persian blue hand-embroidered flowers, yak wool, hand-spun, long, heavy, soft scarf. Few things are truly loved. Fewer have never doubted that despite all their faults they will always be loved.

A yak wool scarf, bought from Amazon for approximately 70 euros, took 14 days to be delivered, made in Nepal, with the yak yarns sorted from Tibet, according to the Amazon product description. Long enough to wrap around his shoulder with enough length to cover his neck during long winter nights, or simply when he misses her warmth—I miss her warmth—soft like her, warm like her. Crimson red, Persian blue hand-embroidered flowers, yak wool, hand-spun, long, heavy, soft scarf. Warms his body, softens his image, feminine like her, but the fantasy of her warms his soul, while this crimson red only warms a body inconsistent in its dimensions during grey, clouded nights or days. Persian blue wraps him softly with a surface area that he doesn’t care to calculate.

Your warmth is the warmth I miss, a fantasy not yet twisted. A fantasy abandoned by nightmares, a fantasy to be excavated for, a daydream never to be realized, forced by choice to keep walking a limestone landscape with rounded slopes, where waters flow and monstrous forms dare not tread. I will wander, searching for a surface adorned with thyme and the flowers you love, letting their roses brush against my fingertips, their fragrance cleansing me of every image, every trace left by others’ eyes. All their eyes would not make any difference in the scale of your eyes, all the images shall be abandoned, a soft cold breeze pulls me to search for you. Will cover your shoulder in red, crimson red.

Fewer have never doubted that despite all their faults, they will always be loved.

Crimson red, Persian blue hand-embroidered flowers, her favorite flowers, yak wool, hand-spun, long, heavy, soft scarf is one of them.